Cold Blooded Evil. Neil Root
The series of murders in question are known as the ‘Jack the Stripper’ murders or the ‘Thames Nude’ murders. They took place between 1959 and 1964, a five-year period. Although this is a far longer time span than that of the Ipswich murders, there are some similarities.
There were eight murders committed by Jack the Stripper in West London and some victims were found in the River Thames. All of the women had been prostitutes and all were found completely naked or almost naked, just as in Ipswich. The key features of the case were that many victims had had some teeth removed by the killer and specks of spray paint were found on some bodies.
It was obvious to the police at the time that the women had not been killed where they were found, but had died somewhere else and then been dumped. But there had to have been a storage place. The spots of paint on some bodies pointed to a paint spray workshop.
Although forensic science was far less advanced at that time than in 2006, it was soon worked out how they had died. The women had died from asphyxiation and this helped to explain the killer’s modus operandi. The prostitutes were almost all picked up in the area of West London between Notting Hill and Hammersmith, and then taken somewhere in a vehicle, probably a van (a white van had been spotted several times by witnesses). The women were probably then asked to perform oral sex on their client. While she was in the necessary crouching position, the killer forced the woman’s head down on to his penis, and she choked, leading to asphyxiation. After that, the victim would then have been taken to a hiding place, probably in or close to a paint spray workshop. There he would force out some of the victim’s teeth and carry out acts of oral rape post-mortem. After his depraved fantasies were satisfied, the body was driven away and dumped.
This is a scenario that could possibly be similar to that of the Ipswich murders. The lack of injuries on both Gemma and Tania pointed to an organised killer who must have had somewhere to take the victims. There are many differences between the two cases – not least the length of time over which the murders were carried out. Those committed by Jack the Stripper spanned years, whereas the Ipswich killings merely weeks. But the parallels are there. In both cases, the victims were prostitutes working the streets. The victims were found naked and with no visible wounds (apart from the teeth extraction in the earlier case). There was undoubtedly a storage place for the bodies before being dumped (and perhaps where other fantasies were carried out) and both cases showed a killer who liked to leave the bodies of his victims in or close to water.
But above all, the earlier case is useful in showing us the temperament of such a killer. Highly organised and efficient, even the teeth extraction carried out by Jack the Stripper can be seen as practical for his terrible purposes. Likewise the Ipswich offender or offenders showed a remarkable coolness and confidence in his modus operandi. It was almost as if the killer was showing how clever he was.
Nobody was ever convicted for the Jack the Stripper murders but the police were sure they knew who the killer was. Their investigation had managed to focus on three main suspects. Then one of the three committed suicide. He was an unmarried security guard who worked at night and whose patrol included a paint spray workshop. The suicide note that he left said that he could not take the strain any more. There were no more murders after that.
But the police investigating the Ipswich murders had none of the benefits of hindsight. They were now almost certain that they were tracking a serial killer or killers who could strike again at any time. This put the inquiry under tremendous time pressure.
The nature of a serial killer inquiry before the offender is caught is a fraught business. The police are thrown into unknown territory, as although much has been learnt from other investigations in Britain and at the FBI base at Quantico, with effective procedures adopted as a result, there is nonetheless no one blueprint for such a killer or killers. Each serial inquiry must be approached on an individual basis. Although the acts committed by the perpetrator may seem inhuman, they were carried out by a human being and people come in all shapes and sizes, just as human nature works in numerous shades of grey.
The logistics of such an investigation are enormously complex in terms of manpower, resources and approach. It is crucial to have a firm hand and a well-defined investigative direction, yet with a degree of flexibility and pragmatism, backed up by the effective use of limited manpower and delegation. Working against a racing clock and with no knowledge of whether tomorrow will unearth another victim, the pressure is unrelenting – and amplified in the 24/7 media age of the twenty-first century.
The Suffolk Constabulary is one of the smallest police forces in Britain, and with the discovery of two victims in six days, the scale of what it would take to apprehend the killer or killers was just dawning. With a working police force of just 1,300 officers, the resources of the Suffolk Police would be greatly stretched. Fortunately help would be forthcoming from other constabularies and Scotland Yard itself.
But it is the unknown that is the most difficult factor for any police force to deal with. In an interview with the author, a local man who has lived in Ipswich all of his life said: ‘It’s off everybody’s radar – you can’t forecast an event like this. You can only prepare for what you know is a day-to-day happening, like, you know, when the football happens, and have extra guys on hand. You can’t legislate for an unknown maniac on the loose. He could strike in any town, or any county.’
Recent serial investigations gave the police skills and pointers in how to approach such an inquiry. The Soham murders of 2002, which took place just over the border in Cambridgeshire, are just such an example. The tragic murders of the little girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman prompted a similarly intensive manhunt before the school caretaker Ian Huntley was arrested, charged and convicted. Likewise, the investigations of the serial murders of Fred and Rosemary West, arrested in the 1990s, provided some procedural approaches.
Technology has advanced such large-scale inquiries a great deal. It has managed to help the police avoid the logistical and administrative errors which, among other factors, allowed the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe to slip through detection nets and continue killing, before he was finally caught in a fateful moment of luck for the police. The use of computers instead of thousands of paper filing cards has solved many such cross-referencing problems. Sutcliffe had been interviewed at least twice during the inquiry, and a computerised system would most probably have exposed the links he had with the inquiry and led to his arrest much more quickly.
Learning from mistakes on previous inquiries and adapting available technology to the needs of the cases were crucial now for the Suffolk Police. All police forces in Britain now use the Murder Investigation Manual, and the first step this illustrates is how to assemble an expert team of analysts. The prioritisation and clarification of information are their task. This information is then entered into a unique and independent database, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System (HOLMES). This system is a masterpiece of criminal cross-referencing and will expose any relevant links. The use of a computer timeline by the inquiry team allows it to see all the most important pieces of gathered information, and when used with i2 software, trends and themes can be spotted.
In any modern investigation, the work of forensic teams is of course vital. The use of DNA profiles and any other evidence left by the killer is of paramount importance. However, the long delay in the discovery of the bodies of Gemma Adams and Tania Nicol, added to the fact that their bodies were left in water, meant that there was little forensic evidence. Water destroys some forensic traces, and the killer may or may not have known this.
Much is said about the negative implications of our ‘surveillance society’, with its echoes of Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’. Yet it is a fact that CCTV footage and the ability to attain zoomed frames to capture detail are very helpful to any police investigation. Officers were already poring over hours and hours of footage taken in the Ipswich red light district and the surrounding area, and also that from cameras placed on the A14 and A12 roads, the main roads leading to the sites where the women were found.
The use of national databases also enabled the police to locate almost 400 registered sex offenders living in Suffolk. The Soham murders had led to a much more formal way of registering such offenders and this was an obvious starting point for the Suffolk Police.